Triage
by K Hanna Korossy
Summary: Alex Annie Alexis Ann missing scene: Everybody's bleeding, and Dean is reeling. Partly Jody POV.


**Triage**  
 **K Hanna Korossy**

Triage for Dean was simple: Sam first, then everybody else.

Okay, so not exactly. Innocent civilians had priority if they were hurt bad enough; Sam wouldn't have wanted it any other way. But considering Dean had been ready—several times now—to let the world die ugly in order to save his brother, he was pretty sure that still counted as Sam being number one.

This time, however…

Sam was looking like he'd fall over if someone breathed on him. His arms still hadn't stopped bleeding; Dean was pretty sure he'd lost half his blood volume already, and there was no way he should even be conscious, let alone standing.

But Jody was also bloody, and couldn't even stand. And Alex—Alexis?—Dean was pretty sure she was halfway to breaking out in fangs. So pardon him for standing there a few seconds staring, trying to figure out what to tackle first.

The concussion churning his brain into pudding wasn't exactly helping, either.

Jody, bless her, spoke up. "Dean, I'm okay. Really. What can I do?" She was stealing peeks at Annie, or Alex, or whatever.

Right. Okay. Orders: he could do that. And triage. Real triage, not just the _look after Sam_ written into his DNA. "Okay, yeah. Jody, you keep an eye on them for a minute. Try to get Sam to lie down and put his feet up. I got stuff in the car."

"For…" She jerked her head toward the girl. "…that, too?"

"Yeah." He recognized the look in her eye as she watched the girl; he'd seen it in the way Bobby had looked at them sometimes. "Yeah, we can get her fixed up."

She took a deep breath, and he found himself copying her. "Okay." A small smile. "Better move it then."

Right. He moved it.

He dug out the recipe for the de-vamping potion and the ingredients they'd need from the trunk. Paused to throw up and wipe away the sweat dripping into his eyes. Got out the saline pack and their thickest blanket and the first aid kit. Paused again for a second, hand propped against his baby, until the world stopped swaying. Then he determinedly wove his way back to the house.

Painkillers for Jody came first, because he'd seen how pale she was despite her protests and he needed her. The blanket went over Sam, and Dean twisted the cap off a bottle of Gatorade and shoved it into his brother's hand with orders to drink. Sam was lying on the floor, but that would have to wait. Dean swept the contents off the one rickety table and started laying out ingredients for the cure.

He heard Jody talking quietly to the girl in the background. Her occasional moans as her body slowly turned. Sam's pants as not enough blood tried to feed that huge body.

Cursing to himself, Dean wheeled away—too fast, crap, the room was spinning—and fell on his knees next to the mama vamp's body.

"Dean?"

"I'm good. Give me five—four, four minutes." The severed neck was still leaking blood; it didn't take long to collect some in a vial.

Getting up again was harder.

Sam groaned as Dean gained his feet; for a moment he thought the sound came from himself.

"Sammy?"

He looked over to see one shaky thumb go up in the air.

"Keep drinking," he ordered, and returned to the potion.

The bowl was big enough that even when his vision lazily doubled on him, he still didn't spill any. Pouring it into the cup was harder, but he was pretty sure he got most of it in there. She only needed a few gulps, anyway.

He hobbled over to the bed where the women were huddled. "Okay, Ann—" Jody shook her head. "—Alex. Down the hatch." Dean passed the cup over to Jody, who accepted it with a shaky smile.

One down.

They had a leg brace somewhere in the Impala, but Dean hadn't taken the time to look. He could make a field splint in his sleep, anyway, and he practically had to as his vision and equilibrium continued to short out on him. Even as Jody got Alex to drink the antidote, Dean got her bad leg immobilized, stretched out on the bed between them. It'd been the least urgent of their problems, but if Dean needed her, he'd need her mobile.

Two down. Sam left.

Dean breathed out, bracing himself to move again.

Jody's hand closed warm over his shoulder. It made his vision blur a different way.

He let himself just slide off the bed, and crawled the few feet to his brother's side. Dean had dropped the stuff he needed by Sam's hip on his way in, and he reached for the saline and the kit with one hand as he felt for Sam's pulse with the other.

Too fast, too weak, too irregular.

Sam lifted eyelids that looked like they weighed twenty pounds apiece. "Sp'lled," he slurred.

"Yeah, I see that," Dean said mildly, noticing the puddle of Gatorade. He rescued the quarter-full bottle and set it aside. "You always were a messy eater."

Sam's eyes fluttered as he snorted. Man, how was he even awake? Dean had seen those _buckets_ the vamps had filled upstairs with his brother's blood.

"Stay with me, okay?" he said more quietly. "I'm gonna get you fixed up, just stay with me."

Sam's head hardly dipped an inch, but Dean was holding him to it.

He knew he could've done the needle stick more gently, but Sam barely reacted. Dean plopped a sterile piece of gauze over it, then looked around for someplace to hang the saline bag from. A rickety chair nearby would do the trick, and as a bonus was close enough for him to grab without standing up.

The bleeding came next. Dean wasn't up to doing stitches, and wanted Sam to get looked at by a doctor first, anyway. But he wrapped pressure bandages around both arms, leaning his weight on them even as Sam squirmed and moaned, until the hemorrhaging stopped. After a quiet _sorry_ , Dean dragged the vamp corpse over and lifted Sam's feet up on top of it

Then he slumped back next to his brother and laid a hand over his straining heart.

"Y'all right?" Sam surprised him by whispering.

Dean probed the back of his head with his other hand, feeling the sticky lump. "I'm awesome," he bragged, but it came out hollow.

"Blood on y'r…face."

He swiped at it, confused until he remembered the vamp he'd beheaded. Slowly and with grim satisfaction. Sickened, Dean dug an alcohol wipe out of the kit and cleaned his face with hard strokes.

Sam patted him weakly on the leg. Dean shook his head in disbelief at his brother trying to make _him_ feel better.

"How's she doing?" he called over his shoulder distractedly.

"Sick and hurting," Jody responded. _"_ But that's normal, right?"

Dean almost laughed at the question considering they were discussing antivenin for vampires. Jody was really wading into the deep end now. "Yeah. That's normal." He'd gone through the turning-back twice now, and he could still remember how it twisted him inside out. How scary and miserable it had been the first time, and how much it helped to have Sam go through it with him the second.

"C'mon, drink the rest of this," Dean said briskly as he grabbed the remaining Gatorade and slid a hand under Sam's head.

Sam obeyed, groggy and complacent. But he kept his eyes on Dean or, when that got to be too hard, his hand.

Dean stared at the fingers that were weakly scraping against his thigh. Then he curled his own hand around his brother's wrist to monitor his pulse. Maybe he was imagining it, but it seemed a little less shocky now.

Both of them stabilizing as they sat there together and waited.

00000

Jody finally took her first real breath when Alex fell into a deep sleep, her skin beginning to regain its color. She lifted one of the girl's lips very gently, something in her crumbling when she saw the gums were whole again, no sign of the fangs that had peeped through before. Alex was going to be all right.

At least physically. Jody glanced at the dead "mother" vampire and grimaced. They'd have to work on the emotional part later.

God, she couldn't believe she was thinking about a _later._

Stroking a strand of hair out of the girl's face, Jody gave her a smile, then turned away. She moved carefully, stretching without jarring her leg, until she could rest her good foot on the floor. It felt like every muscle in her body was tight and aching, and the dried blood on her face itched, but right now that didn't matter.

"How's he doing?" she asked, the question rolling around in her head the last half-hour now. But Alex had needed her, and Sam, his brother.

Dean cleared his throat. "Better," he answered, but his voice was still chewed-up. She couldn't see his face in the shadows. "Think we're out of danger now."

 _We._ It no longer surprised her, barely even registered. "I think Alex is finally symptom-free—I'm gonna go call this in." She slipped a little closer to the edge of the bed, trying to marshal herself to stand.

She could see now that Dean had Sam's wrist locked in his own. Sam still looked far too white, but his lips weren't blue anymore, and his chest wasn't pumping for air. That was a win in Jody's book.

Dean snorted softly. "You got your story worked out yet?"

"Kidnap, torture, self-defense—I don't think I'll have to make a lot up." Except for leaving out the Twilight part.

"You're not wrong."

Dean finally looked up at her, and her heart softened with a desire to mother him, to stroke away the deep lines of his forehead, hold him until the pain in his eyes eased. But he wouldn't take it. And she wasn't what he really needed.

Dean cleared his throat. "You want me to fix your leg up better first?"

"Naw, I'll wait for the real MDs," she said with a grin. "Thanks."

He nodded. He was so still; she realized with a start that she'd rarely seen him still.

He didn't want to disturb his brother's rest, she realized a second later.

She hobbled just far enough up the basement stairs to get a signal, and made her call. The dispatcher she talked to said it would be about ten minutes. Not her people; this was out of her jurisdiction. Way, _way_ out, Jody thought a little wildly, and once again halfheartedly cursed Bobby's name for dragging her into this world and then leaving her there.

But he'd passed his boys on to her, at least.

She limped heavily back to the bed, checking on Alex again, who was still asleep. Then she turned back to the two men on the floor.

"Seriously, Dean. Thank you."

Dean's head came up in surprise. "For letting Alex get turned and your knee bashed in? Hey, no problem."

She knew that was his default, but Jody wasn't letting him do it this time. "You saved Alex. Heck, saved all of us. You did good, Dean."

His shoulders rounded, and she was saddened that he took praise like it was criticism.

She was a cop; she was adaptable. "I'm not sure what's going on with you and Sam, but you're gonna get through it. You hear me?"

His face tilted, not quite turning her way. She wasn't sure she would've wanted to see his expression anyway. "Yeah?"

It was her five-year-old's tone when he needed reassurance, when he was so painfully hopeful he would beat his disease. So she pulled out her mom voice for the answer, even though it made her throat tight. "Absolutely."

His back straightened a little. In the distance, a siren became audible.

And darned if, sitting in that room with three orphans and a whole lot of blood and pain, she didn't feel a little encouraged, too.

 **The End**


End file.
